The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky [children's books read aloud TXT] 📗

with a gesture demanded silence in her turn, “and whatever

you may tell me, I know it all beforehand; I’ve told you so already.

You ask for a certain sum, for three thousand, but I can give you

more, immeasurably more; I will save you, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, but you

must listen to me.”

 

Mitya started from his seat again.

 

“Madam, will you really be so good!” he cried, with strong

feeling. “Good God, you’ve saved me! You have saved a man from a

violent death, from a bullet…. My eternal gratitude “I will give you

more, infinitely more than three thousand!” cried Madame Hohlakov,

looking with a radiant smile at Mitya’s ecstasy.

 

“Infinitely? But I don’t need so much. I only need that fatal

three thousand, and on my part I can give security for that sum with

infinite gratitude, and I propose a plan which-”

 

“Enough, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, it’s said and done.” Madame Hohlakov

cut him short, with the modest triumph of beneficence. “I have

promised to save you, and I will save you. I will save you as I did

Belmesov. What do you think of the gold mines, Dmitri Fyodorovitch?”

 

“Of the gold mines, madam? I have never thought anything about

them.”

 

“But I have thought of them for you. Thought of them over and over

again. I have been watching you for the last month. I’ve watched you a

hundred times as you’ve walked past, saying to myself: That’s a man of

energy who ought to be at the gold mines. I’ve studied your gait and

come to the conclusion: that’s a man who would find gold.”

 

“From my gait, madam?” said Mitya, smiling.

 

“Yes, from your gait. You surely don’t deny that character can

be told from the gait, Dmitri Fyodorovitch? Science supports the idea.

I’m all for science and realism now. After all this business with

Father Zossima, which has so upset me, from this very day I’m a

realist and I want to devote myself to practical usefulness. I’m

cured. ‘Enough!’ as Turgeney says.”

 

“But madam, the three thousand you so generously promised to

lend me-”

 

“It is yours, Dmitri Fyodorovitch,” Madame Hohlakov cut in at

once. “The money is as good as in your pocket, not three thousand, but

three million, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, in less than no time. I’ll make

you a present of the idea: you shall find gold mines, make millions,

return and become a leading man, and wake us up and lead us to

better things. Are we to leave it all to the Jews? You will found

institutions and enterprises of all sorts. You will help the poor, and

they will bless you. This is the age of railways, Dmitri Fyodorovitch.

You’ll become famous and indispensable to the Department of Finance,

which is so badly off at present. The depreciation of the rouble keeps

me awake at night, Dmitri Fyodorovitch; people don’t know that side of

me-”

 

“Madam, madam! Dmitri interrupted with an uneasy presentiment.

“I shall indeed, perhaps, follow your advice, your wise advice,

madam…. I shall perhaps set off… to the gold mines…. I’ll come

and see you again about it… many times, indeed… but now, that

three thousand you so generously… oh, that would set me free, and if

you could to-day… you see, I haven’t a minute, a minute to lose

to-day-”

 

“Enough, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, enough!” Madame Hohlakov interrupted

emphatically. “The question is, will you go to the gold mines or

not; have you quite made up your mind? Answer yes or no.”

 

“I will go, madam, afterwards…. I’ll go where you like… but

now-”

 

“Wait!” cried Madame Hohlakov. And jumping up and running to a

handsome bureau with numerous little drawers, she began pulling out

one drawer after another, looking for something with desperate haste.

 

“The three thousand,” thought Mitya, his heart almost stopping,

“and at the instant… without any papers or formalities… that’s

doing things in gentlemanly style! She’s a splendid woman, if only she

didn’t talk so much!”

 

“Here!” cried Madame Hohlakov, running back joyfully to Mitya,

“here is what I was looking for!”

 

It was a tiny silver ikon on a cord, such as is sometimes worn

next the skin with a cross.

 

“This is from Kiev, Dmitri Fyodorovitch,” she went on

reverently, “from the relics of the Holy Martyr, Varvara. Let me put

it on your neck myself, and with it dedicate you to a new life, to a

new career.”

 

And she actually put the cord round his neck, and began

arranging it. In extreme embarrassment, Mitya bent down and helped

her, and at last he got it under his neck-tie and collar through his

shirt to his chest.

 

“Now you can set off,” Madame Hohlakov pronounced, sitting down

triumphantly in her place again.

 

“Madam, I am so touched. I don’t know how to thank you,

indeed… for such kindness, but… If only you knew how precious time

is to me…. That sum of money, for which I shall be indebted to

your generosity… Oh, madam, since you are so kind, so touchingly

generous to me,” Mitya exclaimed impulsively, “then let me reveal to

you… though, of course, you’ve known it a long time… that I love

somebody here…. I have been false to Katya… Katerina Ivanovna I

should say…. Oh, I’ve behaved inhumanly, dishonourably to her, but I

fell in love here with another woman… a woman whom you, madam,

perhaps, despise, for you know everything already, but whom I cannot

leave on any account, and therefore that three thousand now-”

 

“Leave everything, Dmitri Fyodorovitch,” Madame Hohlakov

interrupted in the most decisive tone. “Leave everything, especially

women. Gold mines are your goal, and there’s no place for women there.

Afterwards, when you come back rich and famous, you will find the girl

of your heart in the highest society. That will be a modern girl, a

girl of education and advanced ideas. By that time the dawning woman

question will have gained ground, and the new woman will have

appeared.”

 

“Madam, that’s not the point, not at all…. Mitya clasped his

hands in entreaty.

 

“Yes it is, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, just what you need; the very

thing you’re yearning for, though you don’t realise it yourself. I

am not at all opposed to the present woman movement, Dmitri

Fyodorovitch. The development of woman, and even the political

emancipation of woman in the near future-that’s my ideal. I’ve a

daughter myself, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, people don’t know that side of

me. I wrote a letter to the author, Shtchedrin, on that subject. He

has taught me so much, so much about the vocation of woman. So last

year I sent him an anonymous letter of two lines: ‘I kiss and

embrace you, my teacher, for the modern woman. Persevere.’ And I

signed myself, ‘A Mother.’ I thought of signing myself ‘A contemporary

Mother,’ and hesitated, but I stuck to the simple ‘Mother’; there’s

more moral beauty in that, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. And the word

‘contemporary’ might have reminded him of The Contemporary-a

painful recollection owing to the censorship…. Good Heavens, what is

the matter!”

 

“Madam!” cried Mitya, jumping up at last, clasping his hands

before her in helpless entreaty. “You will make me weep if you delay

what you have so generously-”

 

“Oh, do weep, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, do weep! That’s a noble

feeling… such a path lies open before you! Tears will ease your

heart, and later on you will return rejoicing. You will hasten to me

from Siberia on purpose to share your joy with me-”

 

“But allow me, too!” Mitya cried suddenly.

 

“For the last time I entreat you, tell me, can I have the sum

you promised me to-day, if not, when may I come for it?”

 

“What sum, Dmitri Fyodorovitch?”

 

“The three thousand you promised me… that you so generously-”

 

“Three thousand? Roubles? Oh, no, I haven’t got three thousand,”

Madame Hohlakov announced with serene amazement. Mitya was stupefied.

 

“Why, you said just now you said… you said it was as good as

in my hands-”

 

“Oh, no, you misunderstood me, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. In that case

you misunderstood me. I was talking of the gold mines. It’s true I

promised you more, infinitely more than three thousand, I remember

it all now, but I was referring to the gold mines.”

 

“But the money? The three thousand?” Mitya exclaimed, awkwardly.

 

“Oh, if you meant money, I haven’t any. I haven’t a penny,

Dmitri Fyodorovitch. I’m quarrelling with my steward about it, and

I’ve just borrowed five hundred roubles from Miusov, myself. No, no,

I’ve no money. And, do you know, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, if I had, I

wouldn’t give it to you. In the first place I never lend money.

Lending money means losing friends. And I wouldn’t give it to you

particularly. I wouldn’t give it you, because I like you and want to

save you, for all you need is the gold mines, the gold mines, the gold

mines!”

 

“Oh, the devil!” roared Mitya, and with all his might brought

his fist down on the table.

 

“Aie! Aie!” cried Madame Hohlakov, alarmed, and she flew to the

other end of the drawing-room.

 

Mitya spat on the ground, and strode rapidly out of the room,

out of the house, into the street, into the darkness! He walked like

one possessed, and beating himself on the breast, on the spot where he

had struck himself two days previously, before Alyosha, the last

time he saw him in the dark, on the road. What those blows upon his

breast signified, on that spot, and what he meant by it-that was, for

the time, a secret which was known to no one in the world, and had not

been told even to Alyosha. But that secret meant for him more than

disgrace; it meant ruin, suicide. So he had determined, if he did

not get hold of the three thousand that would pay his debt to Katerina

Ivanovna, and so remove from his breast, from that spot on his breast,

the shame he carried upon it, that weighed on his conscience. All this

will be fully explained to the reader later on, but now that his

last hope had vanished, this man, so strong in appearance, burst out

crying like a little child a few steps from the Hohlakovs’ house. He

walked on, and not knowing what he was doing, wiped away his tears

with his fist. In this way he reached the square, and suddenly

became aware that he had stumbled against something. He heard a

piercing wail from an old woman whom he had almost knocked down.

 

“Good Lord, you’ve nearly killed me! Why don’t you look where

you’re going, scapegrace?”

 

“Why, it’s you!” cried Mitya, recognising the old woman in the

dark. It was the old servant who waited on Samsonov, whom Mitya had

particularly noticed the day before.

 

“And who are you, my good sir?” said the old woman in quite a

different voice. “I don’t know you in the dark.”

 

“You live at Kuzma Kuzmitch’s. You’re the servant there?”

 

“Just so, sir, I was only running out to Prohoritch’s… But I

don’t know you now.”

 

“Tell me, my good woman, is Agrafena Alexandrovna there now?” said

Mitya, beside himself with suspense. “I saw her to the house some time

ago.”

 

“She has been there, sir. She stayed a little while, and went

off again.”

 

“What? Went away?” cried Mitya. “When did she go?”

 

“Why, as soon as she came. She only stayed a minute. She only told

Kuzma Kuzmitch a tale that made him laugh, and then she ran away.”

 

“You’re lying, damn you!” roared Mitya.

 

“Aie! Aie!” shrieked the old woman, but Mitya had vanished.